Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

Changelog, Rules & FAQ, updates: @vimgolf, RSS.

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$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

Yo To Hello - 1130 entries

Simply Turn Yo To Hello

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #154 / 524
  • Number of attempts: 1
Simple, Practical, and Common - 33616 entries

Simple things we do all the time should be able to be done with very few keystrokes, but sometimes I find something I need to do makes me go, "There MUST be a better way." This challenge is just a simple movement and entering text at a certain place.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #2664 / 7420
  • Number of attempts: 7
Swap values - 4616 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #487 / 1268
  • Number of attempts: 5
prepend * to every non-blank line - 6308 entries

Prepend an asterisk to every non-blank line in the input file.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #607 / 1537
  • Number of attempts: 5
One number per line - 18727 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #534 / 3864
  • Number of attempts: 9
Swap values inside brackets - 2496 entries

Easy challenge.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #182 / 579
  • Number of attempts: 2
Unsemantic linewrapping - 928 entries

[Inspired by a blog post I read: https://scott.mn/2014/02/21/semantic_linewrapping/. Text adapted.] Sometimes when editing a Markdown file, I wrap the lines semantically. Instead of inserting a newline at 70 columns (or whatever), or making paragraphs one long line, I put in newlines at a point that seems logical to me. This may seem silly, but it produces better diffs. Semantic linewrapping also makes editing snappier. I can delete, edit or insert sentences easily using linewise operations. Code-oriented text editors like Vim and [REDACTED] are really good at this kind of manipulation. Editing text that hasn't been wrapped semantically is a pain, though:

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #108 / 231
  • Number of attempts: 1
V to the i - 4802 entries

Input is 99 V's. Output is 100 i's.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #1381 / 1893
  • Number of attempts: 3
Applying same text modification in several lines - 2880 entries

Remove identical text at the beginning of several lines and the closing parenthesis.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #390 / 851
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add semicolons - 10852 entries

Simply add a semicolon at the end of each line

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #871 / 3063
  • Number of attempts: 6
Bad Copy Syntax - 2037 entries

Copy should be from right to left, but sometimes you type it wrong.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #61 / 525
  • Number of attempts: 4
Split line with dots - 2144 entries

This line is too long, split it.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #148 / 634
  • Number of attempts: 14
remove lines containing the word "reader" - 3586 entries

easy stuff

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #226 / 1162
  • Number of attempts: 4
Box it - 7905 entries

Create a box around a line.

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #136 / 1876
  • Number of attempts: 9
multiple cursor alternative - 1519 entries

from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/6w5pfa/crosspost_from_remacs_how_would_you_do_this_in_vim/

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #168 / 380
  • Number of attempts: 6
From argument to object - 1508 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #114 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 4
Two pairs of cluster of letters creates word - 749 entries

Clean and group.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #78 / 178
  • Number of attempts: 3
Every other line - 2910 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #247 / 703
  • Number of attempts: 11
Copy three lines - 2872 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #338 / 640
  • Number of attempts: 4
Extract argument from function - 2357 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #232 / 753
  • Number of attempts: 3
Search and Replace 0 - 4989 entries

Replace every instance of 'aaa' with 'xaaax'.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #594 / 1624
  • Number of attempts: 2
That hyphen - 2595 entries

"vim vi improved"

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #263 / 701
  • Number of attempts: 9
comment and uncomment code inline - 1122 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #121 / 322
  • Number of attempts: 4
Just the middle - 11454 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #2865 / 4197
  • Number of attempts: 2
Team names - 1836 entries

The team names are misspelled.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #232 / 588
  • Number of attempts: 4
For all cases. - 161 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #67 / 106
  • Number of attempts: 1
Basic renumbering - 5648 entries

Renumbering Basic.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #176 / 1264
  • Number of attempts: 2
Adam's challenge - 984 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #123 / 270
  • Number of attempts: 5
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 865 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #132 / 291
  • Number of attempts: 1
ninja substitution - 1420 entries

How can you reuse a previous substitution ?

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #104 / 267
  • Number of attempts: 6
Vice versa - 7907 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #808 / 2128
  • Number of attempts: 3
Order and join - 983 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #128 / 259
  • Number of attempts: 3
Paragraph breaks - 522 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #81 / 167
  • Number of attempts: 3
comments galore - 1045 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #278 / 424
  • Number of attempts: 1
Scrambled numbers - 807 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #49 / 184
  • Number of attempts: 4
Align commas - 1095 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #108 / 246
  • Number of attempts: 7
One to Ten - 2219 entries

Generate the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10, one number per line. Inspired by this Reddit thread: https://redd.it/ak4it2

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #134 / 672
  • Number of attempts: 4
Change part of a function name in multiple occurrences - 662 entries

Change the middle part of the function name in multiple places, preferably using the next and dot commands.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #109 / 208
  • Number of attempts: 2
Increment each number - 1023 entries

Increment each number individually by one

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #168 / 248
  • Number of attempts: 3
Join 'em - 251 entries

This shouldn't be too tough

  • Best score: 4
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #97 / 151
  • Number of attempts: 1
change parenthesis - 296 entries

change the pair of braces into a pair of parentheses

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #29 / 161
  • Number of attempts: 1
Remove quotes after first field - 380 entries

Remove the quotes around each field except for the first field.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #47 / 91
  • Number of attempts: 7
Put the months in order - 974 entries

Our contractor thought that months should be in alphabetical order. Put them in calendar order please.

  • Best score: 20
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #61 / 163
  • Number of attempts: 7
Reorder the groups - 1181 entries

Change the order so that the groups of fruit come before the vegetables.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #102 / 264
  • Number of attempts: 7
Array transposition - 2417 entries

Transpose two arrays into one.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #146 / 448
  • Number of attempts: 15
convert yml into java pojo field - 857 entries

How fast vim can create fields for java pojo i.e class declaration referring to a (simple) yml file

  • Best score: 29
  • Best player score: 36
  • Position: #193 / 227
  • Number of attempts: 1
Assign numbers to fields - 116 entries

You are given a list of space-separated strings. Add an increasing numeric prefix to each one.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #46 / 62
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap assigned value - 647 entries

Simple problem but looking for interesting solutions.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #187 / 254
  • Number of attempts: 3
Collect List - 4298 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #607 / 1190
  • Number of attempts: 7
camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #145 / 281
  • Number of attempts: 3
Space out the alphabet - 1657 entries

Put 3 spaces between adjacent letters.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #126 / 444
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 15983 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #3031 / 4180
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3213 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #389 / 1137
  • Number of attempts: 2
Count both ways - 1022 entries

Right AND down.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #85 / 354
  • Number of attempts: 4
Gray area - 747 entries

It's a golf metaphor or something.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #115 / 271
  • Number of attempts: 3
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1158 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #96 / 300
  • Number of attempts: 8
Don't know what this is - 2022 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #226 / 585
  • Number of attempts: 5
Where should I put the Newline? - 881 entries

Help me put the newline.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #396 / 437
  • Number of attempts: 1
Mess in revision history - 1184 entries

Help Joe clean up what Steve has cobbled.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #93 / 250
  • Number of attempts: 12
Going underground.... - 356 entries

Simple reformatting: in this case changing from the format London underground supplies its customers with, to the format that Google Calendar likes...

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #13 / 128
  • Number of attempts: 8
attr_aligner - 3520 entries

Two attr keywords. Two separate indentations. Align the colons.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #190 / 702
  • Number of attempts: 13
Letter case trickery - 1630 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #165 / 518
  • Number of attempts: 3
quotes inside quotes - 3159 entries

taken from tip 85 of the very good book 'Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought' ! I'd be interested what people use :)

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #490 / 1078
  • Number of attempts: 5
Top X - 212 entries

The End File is the Top 10 Vimgolf Leaderboard at June 29, 2013. This is a second version, with a great contribution of @udioica. X is ten in Roman,a numeric system in ancient Rome

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #21 / 71
  • Number of attempts: 4
Words in parens - 12935 entries

We should all ace this, right?

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #1733 / 3963
  • Number of attempts: 6
Prefixes and suffixes - 635 entries

Generate all prefixes of "vimchallenge", then all suffixes.

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #40 / 201
  • Number of attempts: 5
SFD-ROC: Tic-Tac-Toe - 159 entries

Tic-Tac-Toe You are 'X', and it is your turn. Stop 'O' from winning, and complete the game. Draw a diagonal line through your winning row of three X's.

  • Best score: 25
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #11 / 54
  • Number of attempts: 7
lamb had a little Mary - 609 entries

"Mary" and "lamb" are swapped. Unswap them. Fast as you can.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 25
  • Position: #50 / 168
  • Number of attempts: 6
SFD-ROC: vimvimvim - 1606 entries

Oh no, this line is longer than 80 chars... put each 'vim' on a new line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #242 / 446
  • Number of attempts: 6
ASCII-art Histogram - 320 entries

Create an ASCCI-art histogram for the given numbers. Make sure not to leave trailing whitespaces. Thanks to VimGolf I recently discovered a feature of Vim thAT blew my mind. I'm curious to see what real ninjas make of it ;-)

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #36 / 57
  • Number of attempts: 7
Let's play some Ivmgolf - 1118 entries

Oops, I spelled that wrong.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #318 / 445
  • Number of attempts: 3
Vertical Limit - 2538 entries

transform a succession of one word lines to a an array of strings

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #174 / 754
  • Number of attempts: 5
replacing each line of a block selection - 2999 entries

replace each line's ../assets/js with /javascripts

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #208 / 777
  • Number of attempts: 10
Switch function arguments - 2139 entries

How to switch two arguments of a function.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #314 / 663
  • Number of attempts: 2
Append semicolon after expressions - 1056 entries

Some lines need the semicolon, some don't.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #248 / 419
  • Number of attempts: 3
Remove noise from HTTP log - 717 entries

This piece of log (from the year 2000) contains some irrelevant data. We only want to see the HTTP method and resource.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #128 / 273
  • Number of attempts: 4
switch variable - 5071 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #957 / 1748
  • Number of attempts: 1
The meaning - 575 entries

Numbers are fun!

  • Best score: 5
  • Best player score: 5
  • Position: #289 / 363
  • Number of attempts: 1
Line Zipper - 473 entries

Zip/pair related lines.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #193 / 215
  • Number of attempts: 1
remove dupes from array - 1358 entries

given a random string that contains a ruby-esque array, make sure that there are no duplicate elements

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #105 / 336
  • Number of attempts: 5
Case preserving word replacement - 454 entries

Half way through my project, my people turned into dogs. Now I have to change everything in my source.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 20
  • Position: #78 / 180
  • Number of attempts: 4
It'ss tooo coold too typpe todaay - 224 entries

My hands are numb with cold. It's hard to type correctly.

  • Best score: 16
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #27 / 98
  • Number of attempts: 4
HTML to Haml - 878 entries

Help convert this HTML page to Haml.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 42
  • Position: #133 / 204
  • Number of attempts: 2
expand a list comprehension (python) - 333 entries

Please show your way to convert a list comprehension in python to an ordinary for-loop expression!

  • Best score: 42
  • Best player score: 43
  • Position: #25 / 109
  • Number of attempts: 7
Generate English Alphabets - 487 entries

Start with a, get up to z.

  • Best score: 19
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #20 / 206
  • Number of attempts: 3
Numbering a List - 1931 entries

Pretty simple, number the list.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #42 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 1
Shebangs for all - 1999 entries

We've all seen or used a shebang once or twice. Ditch the specific paths and leave just a dynamic Ruby and Python bath behind.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #154 / 516
  • Number of attempts: 5
A Simple One - 1050 entries

Here is a very simple one - just to illustrate/introduce a vim feature that some people seem to miss...

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #499 / 664
  • Number of attempts: 1
Another Mixed-Up Haiku - 265 entries

VimGolf ... a perfect evening?

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #35 / 90
  • Number of attempts: 5
Reverse Simple Deletion - 847 entries

You did the simple deletion, now reverse it.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 12
  • Position: #346 / 458
  • Number of attempts: 2
The Cake is a Lie - 1346 entries

Correct the capitalization of each word

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #250 / 527
  • Number of attempts: 3
Context Insensitive completion 1 - 498 entries

Finish writing this simple Python HTTP server.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #140 / 245
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make Fancy Header - 1052 entries

Make the header text stand out with surrounding asterisks

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #206 / 344
  • Number of attempts: 3
Change the content of a string - 1580 entries

This docstring is a complete lie. Fix it.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #306 / 588
  • Number of attempts: 2
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 6982 entries

A simple case of removing unneeded code and fixing broken indentation.

  • Best score: 28
  • Best player score: 40
  • Position: #833 / 1706
  • Number of attempts: 4
Chester Yap
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entered into 95 challenges

contributed 0 challenges